Delhi: MHA transfers south DM to Mizoram

NEW DELHI: The Union ministry of home affairs has transferred south district magistrate Amjad Tak to Mizoram. A 2005-batch AGMUT cadre IAS officer, Tak Jis also the excise commissioner of Delhi. Tak has been in the news for retrieving around 2,600 bighas of land in Mehrauli, Asola, Bhatti, Dera Mandi, Ayanagar, Tughalaqabad and several other villages allegedly occupied by powerful religious sects, politicians, self-styled godmen, influential businessmen, etc through anti-encroachment drives. Land mafia had constructed bungalows, illegal structures, parking sheds, boundary walls and farmhouses on gram sabha and forest land four times the size of President’s Estate. The transfer comes four days after a public notice was issued by the south district administration on action against massive encroachment of land in Asola, Shahurpur and Dera Mandi villages. The anti-encroachment drive was planned at the end of December. Delhi government officials were surprised at the move as it is not a routine bureaucratic reshuffle, which is done after the meeting of the joint cadre authority, but an individual transfer. “With the approval of the competent authority, Amjad Tak IAS (AGMUT 2005) has been transferred to Mizoram from Delhi and S B Shashank IAS (AGMUT 2007) has been transferred to Delhi from Mizoram,” an MHA order dated December 4 stated. A DM is usually posted for three years, but Tak’s transfer has been initiated after two years. He took over as the south DM in October 2016. While a majority of the forest land freed from encroachers was handed over to the forest department, a 71-bigha patch, which was freed in April this year, was handed over to the gram sabha for the construction of a Delhi University girls’ college, a senior secondary school, an animal husbandry hospital, a DJB sewage treatment plant, a community centre, a park and road. Many of these projects have been pending for long due to lack of land.

Over a dozen new waterbodies are proposed to be developed on the retrieved land, which would ultimately play an important role in maintaining and restoring the ecological balance. The government has formed a committee to find the best possible public use of a huge mansion in Dera Mandi village built on encroached land. The bungalow may probably be turned into an old age home.